Visual Journalist: Exploring Whitby and York

Whitby 05.12.14

I decided to visit the seaside town of Whitby as part of being a visual journalist, as it is full of character and interesting history. I used to visit Whitby every year with my family until the age of nine, so it was very interesting to re-visit ten years later.

Places to explore:

Knowledge and Understanding

I began by taking a walk around just go get my bearings, and doing a few quick sketches and taking some photographs.

Problem Analysis

Due to the season, I was a little limited as to what I could do. For example I couldn't walk along the beach to find fossils because the tide was high, the smokey kipper shed was closed, Arnold Palmer was closed and a lot of the museums were closed that I'd hoped to visit like the Royal Lifeboat Museum, the Dracula experience and the James Cook museum. However this setback encouraged me to go out of my comfort zone and discover places I hadn't been to before.

Problem Solving 

I went inside an Antique shop called 'Lavender's Bizzare' to be greeted by a very wrinkly dog among an array of obscure objects. I spent a long time in here doing some drawings of things that I found interesting, and chatting to the lady who owned the shop about her trade (which is something I wouldn't normally have the confidence to do). She said that she was born in North Yorkshire, she had owned the shop around 3 months and has collected everything herself by going to auctions and from people selling things to her.

I visited some other independent shops and made conversations with the shop owners about how long they had had their shops,where they get their stock from, how long they have lived in Whitby etc.

These included a music shop, where I spoke to the couple that owned it who put on an 'around the world' folk music festival every year at the pavilion, an antique shop where the owner was testing out old clarinets (we were speaking about clarinets and camera lenses for about 20 minutes!) and a little old accessory shop I used to visit when I was younger.

Further Exploration

Problem Analysis

At the end of my day I was still pretty clueless. Could I do a book about fossils without it mimicking a geography textbook? Is a picture book of Whitby too vague? I did think about comparing my family holiday experiences and memories with my experience today but I guess that is too personal and won't be appealing to a wide audience. I'm not sure yet, a little more secondary research will be required to fuel my thoughts.

York 06.12.14

As the second part of my research I chose to visit York. Similar to Whitby, I used to visit when I was younger (especially the Railway Museum) but I wanted to explore in more depth the places that I wasn't familiar with.

The railway museum was just as interesting as I had remembered it to be, displaying old train travel posters, carriages and engines. I took a particular interest in the 'spotters stories' section, where it showed and told peoples experiences with train travel between the early and mid 20th century.

Problem Analysis

I thought of some potential ideas to 'tell an untold story' within the National Railway museum. I could elaborate in greater deal with some of the spotters stories, as well as illustrating the history of trains through time? However I felt that this didn't have much scope, again for a wider audience. Only specific to those who have a great interest in trains. The only link York had to Whitby that I found was the fact that I was revisiting childhood places, which is interesting for me but not particularly from a viewers perspective.

Unfortunately I chose to visit York on one of the busiest Saturdays of the year for Christmas shoppers. I found myself walking like a sardine through the cobbled streets unable to take everything in, as well as being exhausted from the previous day and not to mention freezing! So I decided to call it a day there, take my primary research back with me and see what more I could find by reading further into interesting areas.